Pixalating or Artifacts I'm a little unsure of the terminology but basically when I play a game (and only a game) the screen suddenly has multiple flashing black dots and gets worse over time. I have updated my graphics card drivers and monitor drivers and it has not really fixed anything.

My system specs

Asus P5Q Deluxe motherboard
Intel core 2 duo 3.00 GHZ
4.0 GB ram
ATI 4850 512MB Graphics card
24" LED backlit LG monitor
600 Watt coolmaster power supply

Any help would be much appreciated, Im getting more then a little frustrated here.

Could be caused by overheating or a dying GPU as well. Normally when it has happened to me it was lots of triangles showing on the screen during a game and I found that if I opened up my case and pointed a large fan directly at the card it helped a bit. The heat sink seemed clean and the fan seemed like it was working so I think I assumed it was the contact the heat sink had with the GPU. I bought a Zalman video card HSF and it fixed the problem for about a year before it came back. I think at that point the GPU was done.

I have been monitoring my GPU's temp while gaming and its averaging around 80-85 C when playing a game such as Dragon Age or Starcraft 2. I cranked up the fans on the GPU and my tower to get the temps to regulate to an even 80-82 C. When I play an older game I have temperatures around 70-75 C and no issues at all, only when I play something more graphically demanding do I get flashing pixels and eventually a crash. Does this sound like an issue with a dieing graphics card?

a 4850 is not really a wickedly good card and I think it is being taxed quite a bit.

either a newerish card or OC it with aftermarket HSF.

Are you sure they are artifacts? If you have dual monitors with some AMD configurations the monitors will show black lines and flickers if overdrive is enabled.

But 85 is definitely a little too high for a 4850.

go get a 2nd hand 5850. It will knock your socks off.

Well I got this unit in 2008 when the 4850's first came out. Its been a great little card to me the past couple years, its run all my games perfectly up until now. Im 99% sure its artifacts and they only show up when the card has a heavy work load. I turn my machine off for a couple hours and I'm good for gaming again for a bit. I do stress the gpu a fair bit, I don't overclock the settings but I do set the max resolution to all my games and crank the graphics up. I suppose it may just be time to upgrade, I was going to go with the Sapphire HD6870 1GB card that MB recommended me when I can afford the couple hundred in my budget next month.

Or Hali sell me urs to put $$ towards a 6950/70 xD

not a bad idea Phonix haha